Breaking and Entering

Written and directed by: Anthony Minghella

Starring: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright-Penn, Martin Freeman, Ray Winstone, Rafi Gavron and Vera Farmiga.

In the cinematic realm, there are five men who can never do any wrong as far as I’m concerned: Cameron Crowe, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Pedro Almódovar and Anthony Minghella. There are and will always be some exceptions to the rule (see: Vanilla Sky), but for the most part each of these directors’ films hold a place in my ever-expanding film bible. I can remember exactly where I was, how old I was, who I was with and how I was feeling simply by name-checking select movies off of their respective filmographies—and yet no film is as permanently embedded in my brain as Minghella’s The English Patient.

I was 14 when the film came out in 1996. I would skip class to catch the bus to Kendall Town and Country to watch it over and over again (I saw it nine times in the theater that year); I would doodle quotes from the movie in my French notebook; and carry the book and screenplay with me wherever I went. Obviously, I was obsessed.

When the film was finally released on video a year later (this was before the DVD became the standard in the Percy household), I held a special screening at my house so that all of my friends, who had ignored my proclamations to go see it in the theater, could watch it and (in theory) be equally as enthralled…except they weren’t. They didn’t see what the big fuss was, didn’t understand why it moved me so, and over the years I have met numerous moviegoers and film critics alike who share these very same sentiments.

Anthony Minghella’s most recent film, Breaking and Entering, brought all of these thoughts back to my mind again. Early reviews were tepid at best (save for Esquire’s brilliant Mike D’Angelo). Critics couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and didn’t really seem to want to, as Minghella, for a large majority of them, has always been too sentimental or romantic a writer for their taste.

Unlike the literary adaptations that have built his career over the years, Breaking and Entering is based on an original screenplay and harkens back to 1991’s wonderful relationship drama Truly Madly Deeply (it even features Juliet Stevenson in a minor role). But unlike the latter film, Breaking and Entering is never light-hearted, and rather than dealing with a happily in love couple, it features a more weathered pair, played by Jude Law and Robin Wright-Penn. They have been together for over 10 years and, as tends to occur over time, they have fallen into their respective roles in one another’s lives without paying attention to the personal and emotional changes that the other is undergoing. It’s not that they do not love one another; it is just that they have let emotional distance build a seemingly insurmountable wall.

As is the case with all human beings, Law and Wright-Penn’s characters, Will and Liv, never realize how much they love and need one another until they face the reality of losing each other. The slap-in-the-face comes in the form of Amira, played by Juliette Binoche, a Serbian widow who enters Will’s life after a series of robberies hit his workplace and he proceeds to investigate her son, a petty thief. The ensuing relationship between Will and Amira is a complicated and often painful one, but it serves its purpose in awakening both of them to the possibility of love once again.  

Anthony Minghella excels at writing relationship dramas; he is innately aware of the complicated intricacies that are involved when love is concerned, and his dialogue is always nakedly honest. Breaking and Entering marks his third on-screen collaboration with Jude Law (his second with Binoche) and it is clear that because of their own intimate relationship with one another that he knows how to bring out the best in him. Unlike the past few roles that Law has recently taken on, he really connects with Will and gives him an emotional intensity that is palpable and refreshing. Binoche is moving as Amira—she can add this to the long list of wonderfully tortured women that she has played over the years—and her beauty and grace bowl you over from the very first frame that she is in.

Much like Cold Mountain, The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient, Breaking and Entering still haunts me, even though it has been nearly a month since my initial first viewing. It may not be entirely groundbreaking or perfect in every way, but Minghella’s film deals with the nature of love in such a masterful way that it feels as if it really were.

Lily Percy - Editor

Reno 911!: Miami

Directed by: Robert Ben Garant

Written by: Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney-Silver.

Starring: Robert Ben Garant, Niecy Nash, Mary Birdsong, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Carlos Alazraqui, Cedric Yarbrough, Thomas Lennon and Paul Rudd.

Much like last year’s film version of Strangers With Candy, the feature length film version of Comedy Central’s hit TV show Reno 911! is exactly what you would expect and hope for…unless you were hoping for something more than an hour-long episode that you get to watch in the comfort of your local theater and pay $11.00 for.

Reno 911!: Miami finds our beloved law enforcement officers traveling cross-country to the annual Police Convention held in, you guessed it, Miami. With this kind of film, where the plot twists are inherently also gags, it’s best not to reveal too much more. Suffice to say that there are guest stars galore, including pretty much all of the missing cast of “The State” that wasn’t already in the show such as Michael Ian Black and Ken Marino, comedian Patton Oswalt, Danny DeVito and Paul Rudd, who nearly steals the movie with his ode to Tony Montana as Ethan the Drug Dealer.

If you happen to be from sunny South Florida, the “only-in-Miami” jokes, incidents and locations will be an added bonus to the hilarity that ensues on-screen. Watching the Reno gang deal with alligators, beached whales, drug lords and naked beach bunnies is almost enough to make you forget the fact that you just paid $11.00 for what is essentially an extended episode of the television show. But I’m not bitter—I got to see Paul Rudd’s chest hair, Michael Ian Black’s forearms and Thomas Lennon’s cute butt, and that’s more than enough entertainment for me.

Lily Percy - Editor

DVD'S:

Viva Pedro!

In “Deconstructing Almodóvar,” one of the documentaries on the bonus disc of Sony Classics’ new VIVA PEDRO collection, actor Javier Cámara says, “I think Pedro Almodóvar has a need to make films. There comes a time when he needs to make a film, with everything that implies. He needs to make it and he wants to make it now.”

After experiencing the seven films contained here, you will be thanking God for this compulsion. The titles included are two wildly erotic mid-80s films, Matador and Law of Desire; his big international breakthrough, 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; early 90s dramas Live Flesh and The Flower of My Secret; and finally the 1-2-3 punch of All About My Mother, Talk to Her and Bad Education. Several of his muses appear throughout the collection—from Antonio Banderas and Carmen Maura to Penélope Cruz and Marisa Paredes, as well as international talents like Javier Bardem, Gael García Bernal, film legend Geraldine Chaplin and Cecilia Roth (who, for my money, gives the collection’s best performance in All About My Mother).

It should be apparent to all that any actor would be privileged to work with Almodóvar, for his characters are filled with poetry, passion, comedy, tragedy, desperation and desire. Watch them all together and they form a microcosm of recurring themes, although you may be in for a disappointment when they end and the real world returns. Not just thematic, but literal reoccurrences appear throughout. For example, the Carmen Maura character in Law of Desire certainly foreshadows the last film in the set, Bad Education. Marisa Paredes’ character in The Flower of My Secret has written a novel called “Cold Storage,” which tells a story that you’ll recognize if you’ve seen Almodóvar’s most recent piece, Volver. Also in Flower, pay attention to Manuela, the nurse acting in the organ transplant seminar and see if any bells ring when you watch All About My Mother. Simply put, the films in this box set are exciting, vibrant, moving, beautiful, and to quote Agrado, “muy auténtico.” No one else could ever have made these films and we are all so fortunate to be able to experience them.

The DVDs themselves are pretty short on features. Only Talk to Her and Bad Education feature commentaries, while The Flower of My Secret includes a “making of” documentary. Oddly enough, All About My Mother, which included “An intimate conversation with Pedro Almodóvar” and an isolated score track when it was originally released on DVD, lacks those features here. Fortunately, there is a bonus disc which includes trailers and three documentaries, “Deconstructing Almodóvar,” “Directed by Almodóvar” and “Viva Pedro.” I found myself watching them and hearing so much about Volver, that I wished they had just waited a couple of months more and added that beautiful film to the box. But why quibble over an otherwise perfect collection? Instead, I’ll just pray that we’ll see more Almodóvar films (Kika; High Heels; Labyrinth of Desire) becoming available on DVD.

Rick Sayre – Pop-Culture Junkie

Hud (1963)

Directed by: Martin Ritt

Written by: Larry McMurtry (Novel), Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. (Screenplay).

Starring: Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neil, Brandon De Wilde and Whit Bissell.

This movie is for all of you out there that think that life just keeps getting harder. Maybe you think that everything would be so much easier if only you had grown up on a Texas cattle ranch. Well, if so, then I think it’s time for you to pick up a copy of Hud.

Yes, I said Hud. I know it doesn’t seem like much of a title but believe me—it will make more sense after you see it. It’s been a couple of days since I saw this great piece of Americana, and yet it’s still fresh in my mind. The movie has a quality very similar to The Last Picture Show (understandably so as McMurtry wrote that novel as well)—a black and white film that brings an era of hardship and struggle to the big screen.

One of Paul Newman’s best performances, Hud is a classic movie made in a period where films seemed to be just as good as the novels they were based on. The story takes place in the middle of Texas cow country, as a family struggles with the realities of hatred and misfortune. The story revolves around four main characters: The only surviving son Hud Bannon (Paul Newman), a reckless out of control playboy; his father Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas), a man of honesty and hard work that has given up on his son and devotes all of his time to his cattle; young Lonnie Bannon (Brandon De Wilde), Hud’s nephew, a young man struggling with the choices in front of him; and Alma Brown (Patricia Neil), the woman that keeps the family together but has the unfortunate luck of attracting the worse kind of men.

It’s the combination of all these great characters that makes Hud an unpredictable and unforgettable story. In the end, the contrast of what happens to the cattle and the turmoil between the Bannon family forces the viewer to accept that there is no happy ending to this story. They can however take comfort in the fact that someone does learn a valuable lesson, ultimately making the whole journey worthwhile. The raw power and emotion of this movie remains in my thoughts to this day; I definitely hope that it affects you in the same way.

Juan Marcos Percy – Importer/Exporter

CRANK

First off, about last month… Look, it was a hard time for the Brooklyn Gang. It’s not as if we hadn’t watched a movie to review. In fact, the problem was that we had. We endured the soul-sucking experience known as MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND. It was our lowest point. Not even the laugh provided by a shark flung from the air into a Manhattan apartment could make up for it.

Please try to understand, dear readers… we simply could not relive the experience. We had an existential crisis. We debated shifting the effort we put into these reviews into something more positive, more constructive. Like starting a fund for Eddie Izzard. We don’t know what sort of financial ruins he’s in, exactly, but if he willingly went into MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND, they must be dire. One evening changed it all. One night re-charged us, gave us back our faith in the healing power of a B-movie. That night is what we’d like to share with you all. Please, ladies and gentlemen, attend the tale of “The Night We Watched CRANK.”

Jeanne: Your mom. (I don’t know what that was referring to, but it’s always a nice way to start off a review, isn’t it?) So, this is “Crank.”

Rick: Starring Jason Statham’s ass! I predict that Jason Statham’s ass will be the “Sharon Stone’s vagina” for 2007. I want ice cream.

At this point we decide to pause the movie so that Jeanne and Rick can take a walk down the street and pick up some ice cream.

We should note that our Pictures and Frames editor, Lily, is joining us for a “Very Special Brooklyn Gang Review.” We should also note that it’s probably because she’s sick and has no other options. Since she’s lost her voice, her appearance is mostly represented by a series of squeaks.

Once the DVD starts again, objections are raised.

Rick: We’re not watching these trailers again are we? I don’t need to see the trailer for SAW III like ever again.

The movie FINALLY starts. Seriously rockin’ theme song.

Lily: <squeak, squeak>

Rick: Lily said, “Crank it up!” …cuz we’re watching a movie called CRANK.

Jeanne (condescendingly): That’s funny! You’re going to have to translate it because her voice doesn’t make it on this thing.

The beginning of the film is all shot from Statham’s point of view. We wonder if the whole movie’s going to be like that.

Jeanne: That would be awesome. Cuz then he’ll look down and you’ll see his penis.

Statham puts a DVD into the player and some random Latino gangster appears, telling him that he has shot him up with a very bad drug.

Jeanne: Is that Brad Pitt?

Rick: I thought it was Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Jeanne: He’s not black!

The gangster is talking in a seriously funny accent. Honestly, it’s like he just watched Pacino in SCARFACE for months on end to prepare.

Rick: He’s like every guy in Miami.

The gist of it is that Scarface has drugged Statham with something that will kill him in an hour, unless Statham keeps his adrenaline level up. Way up. Cranked up, if you will.

Lily: <squeak, squeak?>

Yeah. I have no idea. Anyway, Statham gets really pissed off and starts trashing everything. In his own house.

Jeanne: Oh, not the TV, it’s a nice TV! The TV didn’t hurt you, they don’t live in it.

Statham jumps on his motorcycle to go kick some Scarface ass. Or maybe it was a car. I don’t really remember, but on the recording of our session it goes “vroom vroom.” On the way, he calls his girlfriend, but gets her machine. She sounds mildly retarded, but turns out she’s just a big pothead. Instead, he calls his doctor, Dwight Yoakam. Yikes. Next, Statham calls his little gay friend, who reminds us of a busted/gay looking Pedro from NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. I guess if you can’t get your girlfriend or your doctor to pick up, you may as well look for help from a cross-dressing twink. Meanwhile, Lily squeaks something about Salma Hayek. We all try to decipher what it could be.

Chris: You can laugh all you want, but this is already like a million times better than BLACK DAHLIA.

Jeanne: And MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND… It’s like SPEED but with a guy instead of a bus.

Statham ends up busting into a bar and almost getting his ass kicked before snorting coke off a dirty bathroom floor. Once outside again, he manages to get in touch with Scarface himself, who’s all “what the fuck? You’re still alive?” Statham seems to think that another bad guy, Carlito, will be pissed off at what Scarface has done to him. Scarface brags about being tight with Carlito. Statham has the best line ever with, “You haven’t been tight since your brother fucked you in the third grade!” He hangs up the phone and gets in touch with Dr. Dwight at last, all while being chased by cops since he’s speeding through city streets. Dr. Dwight tells us that what’s important is keeping the rush of adrenaline constant. Somehow, Statham ends up driving his car through a mall, totaling it and winding up in a cab with a Jamaican driver listening to Billy Ray Cyrus singing “My Achy Breaky Heart.” Which sounds awful, but is way more entertaining than anything, ever. They stop by a gas station market where Statham makes a beeline for, you guessed it, Red Bull. Good plan.

Cut to a bad guy’s lair. One of those girls that in the 40s or 50s would have been the gangster’s moll, but in our debauched era is just a music video ho, appears.

Lily: <squeak, squeak!>

Rick: Yes, that IS somebody’s daughter… and she’s stacked. Like a brick shithouse.

Jeanne: What? I think it’s just a brick house.

In addition to the Latino gangsters, Chinese gangsters appear.

Rick: It’s kind of like CRASH; it has like every ethnic group represented.

Jeanne: That’s true.

Rick: And they’re all criminals, just like in CRASH.

(Okay, okay, I know everyone in CRASH weren’t criminals. They were just all morally reprehensible. Except for like, Michael Peña.) But just to reiterate my previous statement, Statham drags a Middle Eastern driver from his cab, throws him in the middle of a crowd of people and shouts, “Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda!!” Then old ladies attack him. With their canes. I swear I’m not making this up.

Chris: This is the best movie ever!

Dr. Dwight tells Statham to find some epinephrine. Twinkie calls Statham from a taco stand (hi ethnic stereotyping) to say that he saw Scarface’s brother walking into some building.

Rick: They totally ditched Ian McKellen.

Chris: How did she miss it? She’s the cryptographer!

Hang on. Okay, sorry… I think that was THE DAVINCI CODE. Back in CRANK, Statham is going after Scarface’s brother, with the help of his Twinkie sidekick, who is doing nothing but reiterating gay stereotypes.

Rick: Oh my god, and of course, the homosexual, what does he have to fight with? A rolling pin!

Scarface’s brother loses a hand, which Statham then picks up, since it’s still got a useable gun attached. Then he discards the severed hand by throwing it at Twinkie and saying, “Wanna hold hands?” Lily objects. Rick laughs hysterically. Statham calls Scarface (again) to tell him that he has the ring that belonged to his brother and wants the cure. Jeanne and Rick take a moment to critique Twinkie’s outfit, which includes a belly baring shirt, low-cut pants and slippers.

Rick: You embarrass me, you embarrass yourself.

Statham shows up at a pharmacy saying that he needs epinephrine. The pharmacist is like, “It’s good to want things.” Jeanne recognizes someone else in the pharmacy.

Jeanne: That’s the guy from that fucking band!

Rick: Oh my god that band? …What band? My Chemical Romance?

Jeanne: No…

Rick: Panic at the Disco?

Jeanne: It was like hard rock but they had that guy that rapped? You’re naming emo fucking bands, they’re not emo.

Rick: 30 Seconds to Mars with Jared Leto.

Jeanne: Fuck you!

Rick: Is it 30 Seconds to Mars?

Chris: Korn?

Jeanne: They were like fifteen and really fucking annoying. They had like ten thousand hits and they did like a Jay-Z… Linkin Park!

Rick: Linkin fucking Park.

Jeanne: Fuck you with your Jared Leto, 30 Seconds to Mars…

Rick: What band is he in?

Jeanne: 30 Seconds to Mars!!

Jeanne and Rick start to fight, which results somehow in Lily getting elbowed in the face. Meanwhile, Statham has taken a run through the hospital, eventually changing into a hospital gown so as to blend in better. It doesn’t last long and soon he’s running around, ass to the wind. It is the moment we have all been waiting for.

Rick: This is the best action movie I’ve ever seen!

Lily: <squeak squeak>

Rick: Lily says, “Rewind it!”

Jeanne: Oh, I think I just saw ass cheek. Hold on, there’s a slow button.

One Hour Later…

Statham finally intimidates an anesthesiologist into giving him some epinephrine and then has someone juice him with the defib paddles, therefore knocking him back into the elevator. He runs out of the hospital and just keeps on running.

Jeanne: He’s running through pigeons in the park.

Chris: He’s trying to catch ‘em. And he does. And he rips their hearts out. With his teeth.

Jeanne: He just looks like a lunatic.

Dr. Dwight calls and is like, “Yeah, you took the whole thing? You’ve got a steel hard-on don’t you?” And Statham does. He’s running around with a giant boner, in a hospital gown.

Chris: Where was he keeping the cell phone?

Statham and boner then steals a motorcycle right out from under the cop It belongs to. Some vaguely folkish, almost Cat Stevens/HAROLD AND MAUDE song begins to play. Statham stands up while the bike speeds along. Ass shot number 3,001.

Chris: This is maniacal!

Rick: I wish I could be that motorcycle seat.

Statham finally gets in touch with his girlfriend, Amy Smart. She’s like, “Have you been trying to call me? I’m sleepy!”

Chris: How did this movie get money? The script must be terrible. I mean, the execution is pretty awesome, but…

Lily: Imagine reading it…

Jeanne: It must sound like the stupidest movie ever.

Once Statham arrives at Amy’s place, she’s like, “You look like you’re on drugs or something. Can you fix the clock on my microwave?” Then, just to keep his adrenaline up, Statham sticks his hand in the waffle iron while Amy changes clothes.

Rick: Get some aloe verde!

Jeanne: Aloe vera. Verde is green.

On the way out of the building, a guy attacks Statham, who distracts Amy from danger by dropping her purse on the ground. While she picks up her girlstuff, the guys fight it out. A stray bullet goes through an open window and kills someone’s pet bird. Statham wins, and he takes Amy to a crowded place: Chinatown. Statham explains to Amy that he lied when he said he worked for a video game company and is in fact working for a crime syndicate, which is why he’s currently a target. Oh, and so is she. He decides a good way to keep his adrenaline up would be to have sex with her. Right there. In the middle of Chinatown. Doggie style. With an audience of Chinese people. At first Amy refuses, but eventually gets into the idea.

Jeanne: Dude, tell me they don’t have sex in the middle of Chinatown…. Oh my god they’re gonna fuck in the middle of Chinatown! It’s like Degrassi. “It goes there.”

Rick: Oh my god!

Jeanne: Oh my god!!

Rick: This is like THE JOY LUCK CLUB meets… something else.

A bus full of Chinese schoolgirls appears. Just like us, they’re SO into watching. Statham starts shouting, “I’m alive! I’m alive!” Chinatown explodes in applause.

Jeanne: Chinatown loves it.

Rick: BASIC INSTINCT! It’s like THE JOY LUCK CLUB meets BASIC INSTINCT.

Yes, a stupid joke, but no one cares because everyone’s far too busy watching The Best Movie Ever. Amy doesn’t get any satisfaction, though, because Statham gets a phone call from the bad guys. They’ve captured Twinkie and are about to torture/kill him. Rick doesn’t mind so much. What’s more upsetting is that one of the thugs says, “Whoot there it is!” It’s quickly forgotten when Francis Capra III (aka Weevil of VERONICA MARS fame) appears, telling Statham things would be easier if he’d just go away and die. Capra says, “We all gotta die sometime, right?” And then gets shot the fuck up.

After a really big gunfight, Smart says, “You weren’t lying” and ends up giving Statham road head during another car chase. I can see it now, men everywhere telling their girlfriends “I need to keep my adrenaline up or I’ll die!” just to get them to do the naughty in public. They make it to Dr. Dwight, who gives Statham a temporary fix that doesn’t require sexual acts (thank god--none of us are prepared to see Yoakam doing the deed) or a waffle iron. On the television, some of the Chinese schoolgirls are discussing the public sex. “He was very manly,” one of them states. Statham arranges to meet up with Scarface so they can trade the ring for the cure. They meet up at a hotel in L.A. where the roof is decorated with naked women in plastic bubbles. Real naked women. Not to mention a whole row of lawn jockeys. L.A. is a weird place.

Jeanne: Do they get food? Or do people just watch them get old and die?

There’s a giant shootout (sadly, the bubbles that contain the naked women? Not bullet proof) and after repeatedly calling him a “little bitch,” Statham ends up chasing Scarface onto a helicopter for a final battle, man to man. It ends with them both plummeting towards the ground.

Chris: Jason Statham’s gonna land in like, a truck full of pillows. Or something equally as silly.

Not so much. He does call Amy Smart’s machine during the long fall down, though. Romantic. However, after he falls to the earth and bounces off someone’s car, he kinda twitches. Maybe there will be a sequel. I hope so.

Chris: He bounced! ...He BOUNCED!

Jeanne: That was a fucking ridiculous movie. I loved it.

Rick: That was pretty awesome!

Chris: I TOLD YOU!

What can we say? Chris is always right. And CRANK was way better than CRASH. Although CRASH vs. MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND? Kind of a toss up.

The Saturday Night Itinerant Brooklyn Gang is:

Jeanne Lopez, Cookie Monster

Rick Sayre, Pop-Culture Critic

Christopher Wilson, Vampire Hunter.

With Special Guest:

Lily Percy, Squeak-Squeak.

BOOKS:

Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church

By Philip Yancey

“I have had to forgive the church, much as a person from a dysfunctional family forgives mistakes made by parents and siblings. An irrepressible optimist, G.K. Chesterton proved helpful in that process too. “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried,” he said. The real question is not “Why is Christianity so bad when it claims to be so good?” but rather “Why are all human things so bad when they claim to be so good?” Chesterton readily admitted that the church had badly failed the gospel. In fact, he said, one of the strongest arguments in favor of Christianity is the failure of Christians, who thereby prove what the Bible teaches about the fall and original sin. As the world goes wrong, it proves that the church is right in this basic doctrine.

When the London Times asked a number of writers for essays on the topic “What’s Wrong with the World?” Chesterton sent in the reply shortest and most to the point:

Dear Sirs:

I am.

Sincerely yours,

G.K. Chesterton

For this reason, when people tell me their horror stories of growing up in a repressive church environment, I feel no need to defend the actions of the church. The church of my own childhood, as well as that of my present and future, comprises deeply flawed human beings struggling toward an unattainable ideal. We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny. Along with Chesterton, I’ve had to take my place among those who acknowledge that we are what is wrong with the world. What is my snobbishness toward my childhood church, for instance, but an inverted form of the harsh judgment it showed me? Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.”

- An excerpt from Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey.

I was very wary at first of writing a review of the last book that I read, Philip Yancey’s Soul Survivor. The book deals with the church and Christianity among other things (two topics that aren’t often discussed here at P&F), and after watching Jesus Camp recently, reviewing a book by a “Christian” writer didn’t seem all that appealing.

Jesus Camp deals with a lot of the issues that I have always had with the church—its preoccupation with perfection and with losing God’s love and favor when you sin; its love of rules and laws above principles and ideals; and its quick-tempered judgment of all who do not fit its mold. The documentary made me cringe in embarrassment during several scenes, but more than anything else it made me realize yet again just how wrong the Christian church often is.

Philip Yancey is in many ways responsible for my not giving up on the church (and Christianity). His book What’s So Amazing About Grace (which I picked up only after Bono recommended it in a Rolling Stone article) literally changed not only my faith but also my life and perception of the world around me. I have always had a prejudice against “Christian” writers—the few poorly written books that I’ve managed to read immediately illustrate the lack of emphasis on the second word in that phrase—and had Bono not been the one to talk about Yancey and his book, chances are I never would have read it.

As a result of Grace however, I am now a full-fledged Yancey fan and supporter. When it comes to writing, he is a writer first and a Christian second, and largely because of this his perspective on life, faith and the church is always refreshing and challenging. Soul Survivor is an especially rewarding read because in it Yancey writes about the 13 people who saved his faith and, as the title conveys, helped him survive the church: Martin Luther King; Jr., G.K. Chesterton; Dr. Paul Brand; Dr. Robert Coles; Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky; Mahatma Gandhi; Dr. C. Everett Coop; John Donne; Annie Dillard; Frederick Buechner; Shusaku Endo; and Henri Nouwen.

From activists to religious leaders to philosophers to doctors to writers, several of whom, coincidentally, happen to not be Christian, Yancey talks at length about how each of these people—their lives, their mistakes and flaws (such as King and Tolstoy’s philandering ways, Dostoevsky’s gambling addiction and Ghandi’s own sexual indiscretions), their personal beliefs—helped him understand that while the church (and religion as a whole) may make many mistakes, as do the people who represent it, their failure should hold no weight or bearing on one’s own personal faith. It’s a lot easier to use the failings of the church as a crutch for dismissing Christianity and spirituality as a whole than to look at the mistakes for what they are, but Yancey challenges us to do precisely this. It is not an easy task, let alone a popular one, but Yancey makes an argument for undeserved forgiveness that is pretty impossible to disregard (and you don’t have to be Christian to understand).

Lily Percy - Editor

MUSIC:

Jorge Drexler – 12 Segundos De Oscuridad

The last time you heard his name, he was winning an Oscar for “Best Song in a Motion Picture.” His name is Jorge Drexler; the winning song was “Al Otro Lado Del Rio” from Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries.

His latest work, 12 Segundos De Oscuridad, is a musical stroke of genius. A blend of melancholic tracks that include his signature percussive layers along with great pop songs filtered through Latin America’s most influential sounds.

Jorge Drexler has created an album that reflects his maturity. After giving up a career as a doctor to follow his musical dreams, he quickly gained high acclaim for his work. He first became known as a composer, writing songs for other artists before finally recording his own songs. With more than nine records under his belt, this Uruguayan-born musician proves to all of us that he belongs among the best that South America has to offer. A wonderful acoustic version of Radiohead’s “High and Dry” is the album’s only English track, but don’t let this keep you from experiencing one of the best albums I have heard in a long time.

Juan Marcos Percy – Importer/Exporter

Joshua Bell – Voice of the Violin

Writing a review of a classical music CD is like talking about why I love chocolate: I know why I love it; I just lack the vernacular needed to fully express my feelings. So for those of you who drop words like timbre and pitch at the drop of a hat, I suggest you stop reading because this isn’t going to be that kind of a review. Chances are you’ll think it was written by a third-grader because, quite frankly, that’s about as advanced as my knowledge of classical music is.

This I do know however: I love Joshua Bell. I’ve loved him from the first moment that I saw him play on Bravo’s “Profiles,” a terrific hour-long show (from the Bravo of yesteryear) that showcased the talents of artists ranging from Bjork to The Fiennes’ family, and I have tried my best to keep up with his latest releases (which is somewhat difficult considering the man puts out like six in a year).

Voice of the Violin is Bell’s most recent CD and it is by far my favorite. Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14” is the opening track and it is hard to get past it and on to other songs, as it is so enchanting and painfully moving. There is so much emotion in Bell’s playing, and the images that he conjures are truly stirring. Having had the pleasure of seeing him play live I can attest to the fact that Bell is an artist who gives himself over to his instrument entirely—the result nothing short of perfection—and he has clearly given himself over to the voice of his violin on this record, as Mendelssohn’s “May Breezes” and Orff’s “In Trutina” also prove. You don’t have to be a classical music scholar to appreciate his playing: just put on this CD, close your eyes and let its remarkable beauty wash over you.

Lily Percy - Editor

SPOTLIGHT:

Martin Scorsese

1942 -

“The excitement of the cinema itself, when you put one shot next to the other, had a kind of seduction to it that I thought I could do. I wanted to be there.” – Martin Scorsese from Richard Shickel’s documentary film Scorsese on Scorsese

            There are some experiences in the cinema that have such a strong impact on the viewer that they are nearly impossible to describe. It would seem that every generation of future filmmakers and film enthusiasts has an iconoclastic director who represents that awe-inspiring movie experience. For earlier generations it may have been Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa and François Truffaut. But for recent generations, the one name that is consistently mentioned by all sorts of moviemakers and film buffs is Martin Scorsese.

            Martin Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Flushing, New York. For much of his first eight years he lived in Corona, Queens. His family moved back to his father’s childhood home on Elizabeth Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Growing up in Little Italy would have a profound effect on how Scorsese viewed life and many of the characters that were ultimately created for his films. In the book “Scorsese on Scorsese” the director remembers, “Elizabeth Street was mainly Sicilian… and here the people had their own regulations and laws. We didn’t care about the Government, or politicians or the police: we felt we were right in our ways.”

            As a child inflicted with asthma, Scorsese spent a great deal of time going to the movies. He has often recalled with great enthusiasm seeing a wide variety of films such as Duel in the Sun, On the Waterfront, The Red Shoes, and the Italian neo-realist films that would be shown on television each week for the Italian-American community. (The Catholic religion was an important part of Scorsese’s upbringing and lead to his initial interest in becoming a priest.) Scorsese took the first step towards turning his fascination with movies as an observer into his passion for making them as a director when he attended New York University. There he made several student films, gained some experience behind the camera and worked towards his feature film debut with 1967’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door?

            Shooting some scenes from the roof of the apartment building he would often look down on the neighborhood from as a child, Scorsese’s first film introduced several trademarks that would link many of his later works: the realistic handling of violence; a vibrant music soundtrack featuring a wide variety of musical styles; and stylistic shooting and editing. The recognition Scorsese received for his debut eventually led to Roger Corman hiring the young filmmaker to direct the exploitation film Boxcar Bertha (1972).

“You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets, you do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know It. “ – Mean Streets

            In the book “Scorsese on Scorsese,” Scorsese recalls showing Boxcar Bertha to his friend and mentor John Cassavetes: “John took me back to his office, looked at me and said, ‘Marty, you’ve just spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It’s a good picture, but you’re better than the people who make this kind of movie.’ He had seen Who’s That Knocking at My Door? and he had loved it. He said I must go back to making that kind of film.” Scorsese had been dying to make a film called “Season of the Witch,” but it needed a rewrite. Cassavetes urged him to rewrite it, and the project would ultimately become Mean Streets (1973).

            Mean Streets is the kind of picture that is often referred to as a “personal film.” What Scorsese puts on the screen is straight out of his adolescence. The neighborhood, the characters, the possibility of violence around any corner, is all very familiar territory for Scorsese and it shows in the authenticity of the piece. The environment often dictates the characters’ actions, making the mean streets of the film a character in itself.

            The movie became an influential picture that is a staple of 1970’s American cinema. Scorsese made an American film; partly in the tradition of the gangster genre, but approached it with his heavy French New Wave and Italian New Wave influence, as well as the character driven films of John Cassavetes. Of all his earliest works, Mean Streets is probably the most crucial in forming the recognizable Scorsese-style and tone. No matter how big a budget or how commercial, or even the subject matter that he would later attempt, Scorsese films would always feel personal.

            In 1974, Scorsese directed Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Again bringing human emotion to the forefront, the film is about a woman who has to start her life over again after her husband has died. She and her son move across the country and Alice works as a waitress to make ends meet. Ellen Burstyn plays Alice and won the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance. The film is wonderfully directed by Scorsese, who encouraged Burstyn, Kris Kristoferson and Diane Ladd to improvise. Ultimately, Scorsese keeps the backbone of the narrative, the story of the mother and the son, as a strong bond that cannot be broken. He followed this film with a psychological drama about loneliness, rage and isolation in 1976.

“All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention. I believe that someone should become a person like other people.” – Taxi Driver

            Taxi Driver is an urban horror film. Though nobody would ever confuse it with a slasher film or a monster movie, the psychological damage and disturbing behavior reaches frightening levels. The scene where Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle stands in front of the mirror and asks, “Are you talking to me?” though often parodied since, resonates as a pre-cursor to the violent outbreak he will inevitably act upon.

            Scorsese slowly unravels the layers of socially acceptable behavior as Travis’ grip on reality loosens. One scene in the film has Travis sitting, watching television with his foot propped against the TV set. He slowly rocks it back and forth, and the audience watches for almost a full minute, slowly anticipating the television’s drop as it crashes to the ground. When it does, we realize that Travis has finally turned a corner in his mind. The film is brilliantly paced as we gradually watch the isolated, depressed taxi driver retreat deeper into his disturbed obsession.

            In 1978, Scorsese made The Last Waltz. He had been approached by Robbie Robertson, the guitarist and songwriter for the influential rock group of the 60s and 70s The Band, about filming their last concert. The Last Waltz featured interviews with The Band, as well as footage from the performance that included Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters and many other legendary musicians. One of the choices Scorsese made, which makes the film rather remarkable, is that he decided not to venture into the audience. The film was a performance, but in his eyes it was about the relationship on-stage between the musicians. For anyone interested in the technical and collaborative aspects of a musical performance, The Last Waltz is practically a visual textbook.

“I never went down, Ray. You never got me down.” – Raging Bull

“Jake LaMotta fought like he didn’t deserve to live,” Martin Scorsese says in “Scorsese on Scorsese.” In 1980, Scorsese directed Raging Bull, about real life boxer Jake LaMotta. With De Niro in the starring role, Scorsese created a beautiful and painful film about an uneducated man’s violent insecurities. What is staggering about the film is that it is raw and unapologetic, yet has a cinematic poetry. Jake is a classic example of a Scorsese leading character that is something less than an anti-hero (in fact not often likable); it’s difficult even to sympathize with him. But he’s compelling, and the drama is compelling and you find yourself fascinated. Often Scorsese dares people to not feel something for the kinds of characters we usually would not care about, and by the end of the picture, he is usually successful in making you find a way to feel for them. As he says in “Scorsese on Scorsese,” “I think I learn more in a movie or in a story when I see what a person does wrong and what happens to them because of that. Antagonists are more interesting.”

The film is beautifully photographed in black and white. This was done for a couple of reasons. The most practical being that in the era of the late 1970s, there was a severe color fading problem in the film process. But the creative reason was that Scorsese saw some footage of Robert De Niro rehearsing his fight choreography and noticed that the gloves didn’t look right. Scorsese was used to seeing fights on television and newsreels when he was younger, and they were all black and white. No matter the reason, the black and white worked and added to the final production’s greatness.

Many consider Raging Bull to be Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece. Perhaps it is; it’s certainly worthy of the argument. But so is a labor of love that was nearly ten years in the making: 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ.

Based on the Nikos Kazantzakis novel, The Last Temptation of Christ poses a hypothetical exploration into the idea that while Jesus Christ was the son of God, He was also human, and therefore would feel human suffering as a result of fulfilling His sacrificial purpose. It also poses an interesting theory that Judas Iscariot performs a heroic act by betraying Jesus and delivering Him to the Romans, in order to ensure that the prophecy is achieved.

Arguably the most famous sequence is Christ’s hallucination on the cross. Jesus imagines a full life wherein He grows old, is married and fathers children. It is His last temptation to be a “common” man. Once He realizes it is Satan who has tempted Him, He begs God to let Him die on the cross. A key scene in the hallucination sequence is when Jesus has sex with Mary Magdalene. This is the portion of the film that caused a great deal of controversy, even before the film’s release. Several religious groups protested the picture, many theaters refused to exhibit the movie, and in Paris there were actually riots over the film.

But underneath the controversy lies one of Scorsese’s greatest works. Scorsese humanizes the story of Christ in such a way that it creates an accessibility. He chose to ignore the style and glamour of traditional Hollywood biblical epics in favor of a gritty, street-level story of an idealist. The same approach used for the urban setting of Mean Streets was used for capturing the society of the deserts and temples depicted in the good book.

“We ran everything. We paid off cops, we paid off lawyers, we paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking.” - GoodFellas

            One of the most remarkable films of the nineties was the gangster drama GoodFellas (1990). Based on Nicholas Pileggi’s “Wiseguy,” it was the true story of Henry Hill, a foot soldier in a New York mob. Frighteningly honest and straightforward with its depiction of brutality, GoodFellas is regarded as one of the most authentic examples of the Mafia life in the world of crime and underground America from the 1950s through the 1980s.

            Scorsese’s frequent use of popular music to enhance his films is at its peak in this picture. A musical journey that passes throughout the movie takes us from Johnny Mathis and The Shangri-Las, through Aretha Franklin and Muddy Waters, to The Rolling Stones, Cream and Sid Vicious. The use of the piano finale from Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla” in a montage as police discover a series of dead bodies is one of the most brilliant music cues I’ve ever witnessed in film. The music in Scorsese’s pictures is used so well that I can hardly hear “Be My Baby” without thinking of Mean Streets or “Sunshine of Your Love” without thinking of GoodFellas.

            The shooting and the editing of GoodFellas also proved to be one of Scorsese’s greatest artistic accomplishments. The use of freeze frame, slow motion and sudden changes in the speed of a shot take Scorsese’s use of the camera to provoke emotions to a new level. One of the great shots in cinema is when Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta sit in a booth at a restaurant and Scorsese pushes in with his camera as he’s zooming out. What results is a visually stunning moment that creates the effect of the world closing in on these two gangsters.

            GoodFellas was the sixth collaboration for De Niro and Scorsese. Since Mean Streets, De Niro had acted in Taxi Driver, New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull and The King of Comedy (1983). They would later collaborate on two more projects: Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995).

“My Father told me we was all born of blood and tribulation. And so then, too, was our great city.” – Gangs of New York

            Scorsese would again delve into the territory of criminals and gangsters in 2002, though this time it wasn’t Italian-Americans, but rather the Irish immigrants of the mid-nineteenth century with Gangs of New York. Not unlike The Last Temptation of Christ, this was a project that was a labor of love, many years in the making. Scorsese first wanted to adapt Herbert Asbury’s non-fiction novel in 1976. The project continued to surface over the years, but was frequently turned down as a legitimate possibility. Finally, twenty-five years after the initial desire to make the film, Scorsese was able to get it made.

            Taking place in 1860s New York, the film is about the time and place of history and geography. Centering on the violent neighborhood known as The Five Points, Gangs of New York portrays a time when the city was about to erupt over the politics of The Civil War, the draft, racism and territorial battles. Scorsese masterfully re-creates the moral ambiguity and despicable living conditions of The Five Points. As Charles Dickens once commented, “Let us go on again and plunge into the Five Points… hideous tenements which take their name from robbery and murder; all that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is here.”

            In 2004, Scorsese told the complex story of eccentric millionaire, movie director and engineering genius Howard Hughes in The Aviator. The film’s greatness exists in joining together two separate film types: the personal film and the Hollywood blockbuster. The story of Hughes is multi-dimensional, frustrating and often met with great empathy. At the same time, The Aviator is a film that exhibits extraordinary flight sequences, the glamour of Hollywood and the corruption of politics. One particularly brilliant aspect to the picture is that Scorsese experimented with the color palette. Each section of the film is displayed with the accurate hue and saturation of the motion picture color of the time. So while the portion of the film that takes place in the early 1930s has the exaggerated brightness of early Technicolor, the 1940s has a more realistic tint.

            Scorsese returned to the roots of his early works, such as Mean Streets, and the great plateau of GoodFellas, when he directed The Departed in 2006. A remake of the Chinese crime thriller Infernal Affairs (2002), Scorsese adds his unique approach to the parallel story of a cop working undercover in a gang, and a criminal bred to infiltrate the police squad. For a Scorsese fan, everything one has come to expect from his work is there and as good as ever.

            The prevailing wisdom is that an artist is best represented by their masterpiece. But what if it is impossible to choose just one work to carry that title? Would it be Raging Bull? Or perhaps Gangs of New York? Of course, some might argue it’s GoodFellas, or maybe even The Last Temptation of Christ. One way or another, there is something to be said for an artist whose work merits this matter of debate, and Martin Scorsese is such an artist.

David Sayre – Independent filmmaker/essayist

Martin Scorsese Filmography

Who’s That Knocking at My Door? (1967)

Boxcar Bertha (1972)

Mean Streets (1973)

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

Taxi Driver (1976)

New York, New York (1977)

The Last Waltz (1978)

Raging Bull (1980)

The King of Comedy (1983)

After Hours (1985)

The Color of Money (1986)

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

GoodFellas (1990)

Cape Fear (1991)

The Age of Innocence (1993)

Casino (1995)

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies (1995)

Kundun (1997)

My Voyage to Italy (1999)

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Gangs of New York (2002)

The Aviator (2004)

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

The Departed (2006)